


Hold My Morals

by VereorInHell



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Bad guy redeeming, But I will fight with you, Canon hospital scene, Funny maybe, Good Theo Raeken, I will not die for you, M/M, Theo Has a Plan, Theo saves the day, Theo thinking about his past, Thiam, We all now thiam should be canon, angry!liam, angst maybe, badass!Theo, cute! Liam, introspective, is thiam Canon now, look what you've made me do, unsolicited prompts from the internet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 05:24:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20848223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VereorInHell/pseuds/VereorInHell
Summary: "Here, Hold my morals. I've got some sketchy shit to take care of."





	Hold My Morals

**Author's Note:**

> No, I don't know what I'm doing.
> 
> Yes, that really is a prompt from Pinterest. Only I don't remember where I took it from. If I did, I would give credit, but... Yeah, sorry.

He’s redeemed.

He barely knows what the word means – scratch that, he doesn’t. He still doesn’t.

Although he considers already a victory the fact that it is now solid in him, the knowledge that there is something that he should redeem himself from.

Baby steps, right?

The fight with the hunters is terrifying. He has been through scarier things, but this is the first time that he doesn’t watch out just for himself, that he wants to watch out for others, too. That he feels this incredibly idiotic pulse to protect someone else. Especially someone so idiotically dead-set on putting their life in danger, like Liam seems unable to not do.

Theo has seen a lot of scary shit. He is young, and he is ruthless, and you don’t survive the Dread Doctors without an insane dose of insanity and a good predisposition to stretch the common definition of good and bad. He is a killer. He has seen people dying, tortured, mutilated, poisoned, and more often than not he has been an active participant in the process of bringing death to the people he has seen dying.

But he has never cared for the survival of other people. He has never cared for the survival of anyone but his own. You don’t survive being experimented on if you do. And if he is the only successful Chimera there must be a reason.

So this having someone to protect, this insane fear that shakes him through the core and pushes him, demanding that he always knows where Liam is, always makes sure Liam is safe, watching out for him, this is new. He doesn’t know how to handle it, how to deal with it, he doesn’t even understand what he should be doing, should he ignore it, should he listen to it?

He’s scared shitless that something happens to Liam.

And he knows that he has something he should ask forgiveness for. He knows there is something, many things actually, in his past, that he should regret. He knows, he is slowly, but irrevocably, learning that there is little in his past that he can still be proud of. There are things that used to give him the boost, to drive him forward, and now matter so little. There are things that he now wishes he had never tried, and not just because he failed at the attempts.

He is learning that there are worse things than always being controlled, never being sure you will make it at the end of the day, never knowing if you will wake up from that new session of surgery and, if you do, if you will spit mercury until you’re dead. He has learned, in the sort of hellish dimension where he has been trapped and Tara has ripped his heart out thousands of time, that there are worse things than losing.

Like when you lose someone you didn’t want to.

See, death has this nasty habit of, generally, sticking to people like a shadow. It’s damn difficult to undo it. Once you’re dead, you’re gone. Forever. Unless someone saves you with a miraculous serum in the short span of the following, very few hours after you’re dead, but, well, he’s run out of that, hasn’t it? He won’t be able to save anyone from death now. It doesn’t matter how much he doesn’t want to lose whoever it might be – Liam, it doesn’t matter if it’s Liam.

Why does it matter so much that Liam survives?

This is pointless and frustrating.

But, back on listing the achievement of the week, or, month, or, well, since after coming back from hell: he cares. He knows there are things he’s done that he wishes he could go back in time and not do them again. So he’s not redeemed, but he is – redeemable? Redeeming, even, maybe?

But Liam charges the hunters, just like that, stupid and blind fury, reckless and he’s very, very likely to die, and Theo’s heart freezes. He’s more terrified than when Tara sprouted from a hole in the ground and dragged him to hell.

Liam charges the hunters and those are bullets, the ones that are flying towards them. Theo feels, vaguely registers the stinging pain and burn of the wolfsbane from where the bullets have penetrated his body, but even worse he smells the poison spreading instantly through Liam’s body, almost feels the pain that Liam is too angry to feel…

And he’s never been more scared to lose something.

Is this redemption?

He doesn’t care: he slashes the throat of the hunter standing in front of him and digs his whole, clawed fist into the chest of another. They both go down, dead before they can even realize the pain.

Liam stops in his tracks, raising burning golden eyes from his fallen preys into Theo’s bright blue ones. For a moment, Theo can imagine the fury the other is redirecting towards him, for stealing his kill… then he beats his eyelashes and the wolf recedes, giving upper hand to the human.

“…Theo? What are you doing here?” Liam asks, somewhat baffled.

Theo fights the blushing with all his might. He snorts and goes for a gruff answer, because it’s the best, quickest way he can mask his embarrassment with.

And really, why, why is he here?

“Scott asked me” he answers.

He can see the moment Liam’s brain register the words, his expression going to an endearing (endearing? Since when is anything related to Liam endearing?) mixture of suspicious and amused.

“Asked?” Liam echoes: “since when do you do what Scott asks you to?”

Theo snorts and shrugs. This one is easier to fake: he doesn’t have to fake at all.

“Since when it’s more convenient than taking a bunch of homicidal hunters alone. What’s the plan?”

Liam snorts.

“There is no plan. I mean, unless you count surviving as one”

Theo smirks.

“I’d like that”

I would like you to survive as well.

He grinds his teeth together to keep his mouth shut, to avoid saying that damned second part aloud. He doesn’t want to deal with this now. He doesn’t have the time. He needs to focus: he can’t win if he doesn’t focus.

It’s already distracting enough that he has the new, unsettling element of having to care for something else, protecting someone else, and really, since when has he started caring – whatever.

“So what, now?” Liam asks.

Theo corks an eyebrow, going for sarcastic and smothering every ounce of this new, warm feeling that’s flooding into his chest. Is Liam… thrusting him? Putting his own safety into Theo’s hands? Not long ago, that would have been suicidally naïve. Now, though, now Theo would do whatever it takes to keep Liam safe.

No, he’s not digging into that hole, not while the hunters are still alive and kicking.

“Here, hold my morals. I’ve got some sketchy shit to take care of” he replies, only the right amount of sass.

Liam burst out in a surprised, delighted chuckled, as if he didn’t want to let it out but couldn’t really help it, so surprised he is from the absolute idiocy and pointlessness of Theo’s answer.

Theo agrees.

He also might happen to like Liam smiling, ok?

“That didn’t sound like a trite Tumblr prompt at all”

Theo scoffs, waving one hand in the hair.

“See? You’re so illiterate. That was obviously from Pinterest”

Liam laughs again, and the sound kills Theo a bit. He grinds his teeth together, but can’t keep his treacherous mouth from mirroring Liam’s expression.

“No, really, what’s the plan?” Liam asks, after a while.

Theo, obviously, has one.

Turns out it’s not much different from the Pinterest prompt. Only, Liam isn’t holding his questionable morals at all, he’s by Theo’s side, fighting with him.


End file.
